


but i know that i was born to be loved

by floralathena



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Family Dynamics, Gen, M/M, Sexuality Crisis
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-25
Updated: 2019-05-25
Packaged: 2020-03-14 18:20:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,443
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18953236
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/floralathena/pseuds/floralathena
Summary: They slurp in silence. El watches him crumble up a bunch of crackers to drop in his soup and does it herself with just one, adding more one at a time as she eats.“How do you know if you want to kiss a friend?” she asks, and Steve’s spoon slips out of his hand and into the bowl, spattering chicken noodle soup onto his arm.He had almost forgotten about last night. Most of it was a desaturated blur of music and dancing and drinks, but the bathroom is unfairly clear in his mind. It’s blindingly bright and oddly quiet in his memory even though he knows the lights were normal and there was music playing. In his mind, his and Frank’s breathing and the wet sound of sloppy lips locking are magnified times a thousand.





	but i know that i was born to be loved

**Author's Note:**

  * For [mjolnirbreaker](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mjolnirbreaker/gifts).



Frank Miller pulls him into the bathroom and locks the door at around 11:45 on Friday night. 

Steve probably should have seen this coming. He's been hanging around and keeping an eye on Frank ever since ten. It's Frank's house, after all, and it's Frank who has a reputation for going too hard too fast, and it's Frank who just went through an ugly breakup with Emily Wallace. He can't blame Frank for mistaking Steve's passing interest for some kind of threat.

Frank grabs him by the collar and backs Steve against the counter. The knob of a cabinet is digging into his hip but he's nicely buzzed and about to get his ass kicked and maybe get blood on Mrs. Miller's nice decorative hand towels, so he doesn't really care.

Steve raises his hands in surrender. 

Frank presses forward and suddenly lips are on his own. Steve is overwhelmed by the smell of sweat and alcohol, Frank leaning into him so that his front half is scorching hot and the countertop digging into his back really starts to hurt, but he really doesn't care. Steve grips Frank's arm with his right hand and he doesn't really know what he's doing, if he's planning to push him away or hold on for dear life, but then Frank moves his hands from Steve's collar to grip his waist and why the hell would Steve ever want to push him away? 

He's kissing back. He thinks maybe his lips have been kissing back this whole time and his brain just took a while to catch up, which kind of checks out. Steve suddenly remembers sitting on the bleachers laughing in the gym with his arm slung around Frank. It was back in middle school before Tommy told him what was weird and what was cool, and putting his arm around Frank Miller turned out to not be cool.

Frank is a sloppy kisser. He's also a little bit more drunk than Steve is comfortable with, and Steve really should stop before things go any further and they make things even more fucked up than they already have. Frank's hands keep moving, though, one roving up to grab Steve's hair and another sliding down to hook two fingers in his belt loop. Maybe Steve is pretty drunk too.

Somebody pounds on the door and Frank jumps back like he's been burned. He shoves his hand- the one that had been twisting in Steve's hair- firmly over Steve's mouth.

"JUST A MINUTE," he yells through the door, "DEALING WITH A PARTY FOUL, TRY UPSTAIRS!"

Steve's chest is heaving. Everything feels like it's heavy and buzzing. His hands are hovering in the air where Frank was, and he drops them. They fall so quickly it surprises him and he thinks that the air shouldn't be quite so yielding. Frank withdraws his hand from Steve's mouth and immediately Steve misses the warmth of it. 

Frank's eyes trace Steve from head to toe and he turns to unlock the door.

Unable to say anything, Steve impulsively grabs Frank's collar and pulls him back in. It isn't hot or dirty. He doesn't even open his mouth. It's just a press of lips, and Steve lets go of Frank's collar to touch his neck, feeling a wild pulse hammer beneath sweat-slick skin. 

This time when they break apart, Steve's breathing is even. He looks at the doorknob and Frank unlocks it, slipping out just as quickly as he'd entered. Steve waits for what he hopes is a few minutes before leaving, making a beeline for the just-fuck-me-up punch bowl and filling a Solo cup nearly to the brim.

-

He wakes up on Saturday morning with a pounding head and damp sheets. It takes three rings of the phone for his brain to connect the noise to its meaning, and another two rings to realize that Steve has to answer it. 

"Hhhhhh," he groans into the receiver. 

"Harrington. It's Chief Hopper."

"Oh, shit," Steve mumbles.

"I'm not arresting you, Steve, I need a favor." 

"Oh, sorry. I just woke up." Steve’s mouth feels like something died in it.

"I can tell. It’s an emergency. Look, can you get ready in the next ten minutes and follow some instructions for me?"

"Uh. I- yeah, sure, what… What do I have to do?"

"You have a pen and paper?" 

Eighteen minutes later (which is a new personal record), Steve is following hastily-scribbled instructions to a cabin in the woods surrounded by booby traps. There’s an old plastic bag in his passenger seat filled with half of his mother’s medicine cabinet, two cans of Campbell’s, and some saltines he found that he hopes are still good. Saltines probably can’t go bad. They’re like the cockroaches of food. He parks where Hopper told him to and walks carefully over dead leaves and fallen branches, keeping an eye out for trip wires and bear traps because he lives in Hawkins and life can’t be simple. When he sees the cabin, he also sees Hopper standing on the porch looking more stressed than usual. It’s impressive because he generally only sees Hopper when the world is ending or when he’s drunk off his ass, so he’s pretty sure his baseline for Hopper’s face is kind of skewed in the stressed direction already.

“You can stop staring at the ground now,” he says.

“Cool.” Steve keeps an eye on his feet but picks up the pace. “I brought some food.”

“She probably won’t eat it, but who knows. Maybe you’ll have better luck than I did.”

“I probably won't. But I'll still, you know, try.” Steve reaches the steps of the cabin and Hopper steps down to meet him with a firm hand on the shoulder.

“Look, she’s perfectly capable of taking care of herself, but she’s miserable right now. I just… I feel better if somebody’s with her. Call me if anything happens. She knows the rules.” With that, Hopper sets off for work.

Steve stares at the cabin door. Just as he’s considering running back to Hopper and coming up with some reason why he can’t sit around and watch a sick kid while she naps, he’s hit with a wave of nausea.

“Shit,” he mutters, and nudges the cracked door fully open so that he can find a countertop to set his plastic bag on, preferably next to a sink or trash can.

“Swear jar,” a small voice says. It sounds rough and weak, and Steve turns to find a mound of blankets watching him. 

“Hey,” he says as casually as he can manage, “I’m Steve.”

“I know,” the blanket mound says. Fair.

“What do you want me to call you?”

He thinks that the mound shrugs. 

“Alright then, El it is. Don’t, uh. Don’t mind me. I just brought you some stuff, and I’m gonna hang out here until Hop- uh, your- til Hopper gets back. Is there- do you really have a swear jar?”

“Not yet,” the mound says. A head pokes out, pale and covered in brown curls. “You brought stuff.”

“Yeah. Nothing fun, just sick people stuff. Like, soup and crackers. And medicine. Did Hopper give you medicine?”

“Almost. It was bad.” She says it very severely and follows it up with a sneeze.

Steve smiles. She’s pretty cute, for somebody who could kill him with her mind.

“I have some that you won’t have to taste.”

Steve spends the next ten minutes sorting through pill bottles. He ultimately settles on a harmless-looking generic decongestant pill and some ibuprofen, which he gives to her with a full glass of water. 

They watch TV. El slowly emerges from her blanket cocoon as time goes on and after she starts looking sort of alive, Steve fixes them soup and crackers. He sets a bowl down for each of them on the small table and lays the sleeve of saltines in the middle, ripping it open to grab a few for crumbling on top.

“Are you sick?” she asks as he nibbles on a saltine. 

“Sort of,” he says. “I drank too much last night.”

Her face scrunches. “Too much?”

“Uh. Too much alcohol. You know alcohol? Oh. It's for adults. Very gross and very illegal for you.” Steve starts stirring his soup and blowing on it in hopes that she’ll get the hint and start eating.

“You’re not an adult.” 

Steve frowns. “Who told you that?”

“Mike. And Dustin. You don’t look adult.” El is still wrapped up in her blankets, one pale hand sticking out to swirl her spoon around in her soup.

“Okay, so I shouldn’t have been drinking. And now I’m sick. That’s a cautionary tale for you.” Steve slurps at his spoon even though the soup is still kind of too hot.

“What’s cautionary?”

“If I tell you will you eat your soup?”

El looks at him like he drives a hard bargain. “...Okay.”

“It’s like… you use me as a warning. Like, since I drank a lot and got sick, now you know not to drink a lot in the future. Cautionary tale.”

She nods. “Cautionary tale.”

Steve picks up a cracker from the sleeve in the middle of the table and flicks it at her, paper football style. “Now eat.”

El’s smile is small and sweet and possibly the nicest thing Steve’s ever seen.

They slurp in silence. El watches him crumble up a bunch of crackers to drop in his soup and does it herself with just one, adding more one at a time as she eats.

“How do you know if you want to kiss a friend?” she asks, and Steve’s spoon slips out of his hand and into the bowl, spattering chicken noodle soup onto his arm.

He had almost forgotten about last night. Most of it was a desaturated blur of music and dancing and drinks, but the bathroom is unfairly clear in his mind. It’s blindingly bright and oddly quiet in his memory even though he knows the lights were normal and there was music playing. In his mind, his and Frank’s breathing and the wet sound of sloppy lips locking are magnified times a thousand.

El is looking at him expectantly, but her eyes aren’t steady like they have been all day. She’s glancing around, looking down at her soup and over at the window, and she’s fidgeting. Steve can’t imagine being a kid in her position.

“Well. If you think that maybe you want to kiss them then you probably want to kiss them.” 

She makes a face and flicks a cracker at him. Steve probably shouldn’t have taught her that.

“Alright, geez. Uh, I don’t know. Really.”

“But Nancy,” she says like that explains everything, “You knew.”

“Who told you-”

“Dustin,” she says, and Steve probably should have seen that coming. “She was your girlfriend.”

“Okay. Uh. Well, it can be hard to know sometimes, if you like somebody like a friend or like a girlfriend. Or boyfriend. Or… if you just want to kiss them. Because sometimes you can kiss people without dating them. Anyway… sometimes you just know, and sometimes you don’t know until you try it.”

“If you don’t try, how do you know?” She’s leaning forward, eyebrows furrowed.

Steve pushes his soup out of the way.

“I don’t really… I’m not an expert just because I had a girlfriend, you know, it didn’t even work out.”

El looks desperate. Her pale face and red nose make her look like a particularly sad doll. 

Steve sighs.

“Well, like I said, you can want to kiss someone without wanting to be their boyfriend- or, uh, girlfriend- because sometimes people are just attractive, you know? Like… like people on TV. There are a lot of pretty people on TV, right?”

She nods.

“And so maybe you think they’re pretty and you might want to kiss them, but that doesn’t mean you love them or want to be with them. They’re just… attractive.”

“So…” she says slowly. Steve can almost see gears turning in her head. “I can want someone to be my boyfriend but still want to kiss other people?”

“Basically. You can’t actually kiss other people if you have a boyfriend or else you’re cheating which is very,  _ very  _ bad and you should never do it. But it’s normal to want to…  _ kiss _ people, even if you don’t want to be with them.”

“How do you know? When you want to… be with them?”

Steve honestly doesn’t know. Nancy was just different from every girl he’d ever known, in a million ways that he could never really identify. She’s still different, a beacon of strength, intelligence, and beauty that he can’t imagine anything in the world could outshine. 

“I think… when they feel special. When they make you feel special. Like being with them is different from being with anybody else.”

She looks at him for a little bit before nodding. “Thank you,” she says, and picks up her soup bowl to drink the final dregs.

“No problem,” Steve says. He hopes that he’s saved Hopper at least half of an awkward conversation.

The rest of the day passes uneventfully. She sneezes and coughs and groans until Steve convinces her to drink some of Hopper’s nasty cough syrup which puts her to sleep within minutes. He wiggles a pillow under her head, tucks her in as best as he can on the couch, and waits for Hopper’s return.

Hopper gets home an hour later than he said he would, but El is still asleep so it doesn’t really matter. He thanks Steve and offers to give him five bucks for the soup and crackers, which Steve laughs at before coughing and telling him not to worry about it. He gets home at eight and collapses into bed without eating dinner. It’s another two hours before he’s able to fall asleep, and he dreams about making out with Frank Miller under a spotlight that’s roasting him alive.

\- 

Now when Hopper is going to be gone for a long time and she’s been feeling lonely or under the weather, El asks if Steve can come over. Sometimes Hopper indulges her. Steve could never bring himself to deny her anything, and he genuinely enjoys her company, so he’s always accepted until now. 

“Tell her I’m really sorry, it’s just my dad.”

“Get yourself grounded?” Hopper asks lightly.

“I wish. Maybe then I wouldn’t have to meet his college friend’s daughter tonight.”

Hopper sucks air in through his teeth. “Ouch. Good luck with that. I’ll let her know you’ve got family stuff.”

“Yeah,” Steve says, and Hopper hangs up.

He spends the morning watching his mother tear through his closet and criticize everything that she didn’t buy for him and a few of the things that she did. She lays out an ensemble like he’s going to his first day of kindergarten, complete with a pair of argyle socks that Steve didn’t even know he owned and his old brown church shoes that are at least one size too small. He puts on the outfit, argyle socks and all, and picks out his dirtiest sneakers to complete the look. They have some black gunk on them from another dimension. His father shoves a comb into his hands and tells him to fix the mess on his head, so he goes into the bathroom and does nothing for a minute or so before coming back out and saying it was the best he could do. It’s not quite teenage rebellion, but it feels a little less like defeat, so he’ll take it. 

They drive an hour away to a charming town that looks like a postcard of small-town Americana, and then they drive another fifteen minutes deep into a sprawling subdivision of ostentatious houses that Steve doesn’t think anybody could really call home. He’s ushered through a _foyer_ , past a _chef’s kitchen_ and a _breakfast nook_ into a _formal dining room_. He’s introduced to Anna, who seems about as enthusiastic about this arrangement as Steve feels. She’s pretty, though, with clear skin and auburn hair. Steve wouldn’t be opposed to hooking up with her, but he isn’t sure that they would have much to talk about. A cross necklace is nestled perfectly in the collar of her button-up shirt.

Nobody thought to tell Steve that Anna had a twin brother. Jacob snatches the seat directly across from Steve, Anna sitting on the end of the table between them, their parents occupying the table’s other half. They bow their heads to say grace before dinner and when Steve peeks, Jacob is peeking back. When Anna finally says “Amen,” she drops Steve’s hand and he catches her wiping her clammy palm on her leg. Somebody’s foot bumps into Steve’s, and he looks back up at Jacob. His deep brown eyes sparkle and he’s almost smiling. 

They talk about college and basketball and mission trips as their parents guide the conversation. Jacob manages to slip his appreciation of Culture Club into a discussion about the stock market without raising a single paternal eyebrow, and Steve feels something in his stomach swoop. Jacob nudges his foot during a tirade about modern boys being too soft. Steve rests his foot against Jacob’s as his mother talks about divine punishment for  _ those _ sinners. 

After dinner, the adults retire to the  _ drawing room _ and encourage Jacob and Anna to show Steve around. Anna mentions a pile of AP homework and disappears, leaving Steve to follow Jacob into his room where he wants to show Steve a tape he bought from a street hawker in New York City. Jacob pops the tape into his boombox, shuts and locks his door, and this time Steve is ready. He pulls Jacob in by the belt loops and Jacob’s grin gives him butterflies, so he kisses it away. It feels a little desperate until he lets Jacob take the lead, and then it feels kind of dangerous, and then it just feels new, exciting, and right.

He pretends to fall asleep on the drive home. He tries not to think too hard about the piece of paper burning a hole in his pocket or the tape that he’s clutching in his lap. Instead he contemplates the way that he feels a little empty and a little too full at the same time, like he’s half-dead from running a marathon but he couldn’t possibly fall asleep no matter how hard he tried. He’s not really surprised by what he did, by how he responded to Jacob’s touch. Maybe he’s always kind of known what lived inside him and he got so good at ignoring it that he forgot it was there to begin with. It’s always been there, accompanied by a thrumming anxiety that somebody might see it.

Late at night when Steve had let himself imagine, he always thought that he would feel dirty. He had felt kind of dirty in Frank Miller’s bathroom next to the monogrammed towels with music thumping outside and cheap beer on his breath. The blinding white lights of the Millers’ bathroom were harsh, but Jacob’s lone desk lamp had washed everything beautiful in warm yellow light and let everything unimportant fall into shadow. Jacob’s bedroom was cluttered with tapes, clothes, and textbooks, one of which Steve had tripped over. He’d fallen onto the bed and tried to pretend it was purposeful, which made Jacob laugh, which made Steve blush.

Those few times when Steve had torn himself from the moment to open his eyes and take it all in, things almost felt pure like Nancy Wheeler’s bedspread and biology flashcards. He thinks that maybe if he spent another evening or two in Jacob’s room, it could start to feel the same. 

-

Steve doesn't know when he started hanging out at the cabin while Hopper was still home. It had just kind of happened, like most things in his life, and he didn't question it. El is allowed to go and hang out with her friends sometimes now, so she doesn't really need Steve to keep her company, but she and Hopper still invite him over. He ate exactly two sad freezer meals before he started stopping for food on his way to Hopper’s.

Tonight he picked up some spaghetti sauce, noodles, and meatballs. El is watching the noodles boil as Steve stirs the sauce and meatballs around. Hopper is digging through his cabinets trying to find a colander. Suddenly El's head turns sharply and she abandons the pot, running into her room and shutting the door.

Hopper stands up from the floor with a groan, kicking the cabinet shut. "Wheeler's on the walkie. We're not gonna see her til the food's ready." He opens another cabinet and starts rummaging.

“I think I’m kind of gay.”

The clinking of pots and mixing bowls stops.

Steve doesn't know why he said that. He was thinking it, obviously, he's been thinking it for weeks and months and sort of years, but it's insane to say it out loud. It's dangerous. It's supposed to live in his head. Except lately it feels like his head is going to burst with thoughts of the future, of family, of Nancy and Jonathan and Jacob and Anna and his parents, too. He feels like he's something wrong shoved into a Steve skin, like his life doesn't fit him. When his parents decide to go to church or hold a party or force a family dinner, he feels like a Russian spy on the verge of being found out. They look at him sometimes like they know, but they can't, because if they knew then he couldn't be standing here in perfect health in Chief Hopper's kitchen making spaghetti paid for with his dad's card. 

Maybe, with everything Hopper's seen and done and lived through, Steve won't look so wrong.

Steve keeps his eyes glued to the stovetop. He stirs the noodles. Silence lingers and all he wants is to hear Hopper's mixing bowls clatter again.

"Have you told anybody else?"

Steve swallows and shakes his head. "No."

Hopper doesn't say anything.

"Well, Frank Miller probably knows. That or he thinks I was, like,  _ really _ drunk."

Silence. Fuck. Why did he think it was a good idea to say that?

Steve lets go of the wooden spoon and turns around. "Please say something."

Hopper's looking at him. His face isn't stressed or angry or disgusted. It’s a little… sad, Steve thinks, but that can’t be right. It’s also kind of blurry.

“Come here, kid,” Hopper says, and when did Steve start crying? 

Steve takes one step, and then a second, and then he’s crying on the chief of police.

“I don’t know why I get the honor, but… thanks. Really, it-” Hopper sounds a little off and it makes Steve feel a little better, that he’s not the only one. “You’re brave, you know. You’re a good kid. A good man.” He thinks he might collapse, except Hopper’s holding him up. He’s pulled into a chair and handed a roll of paper towels,  but Hopper’s hand stays on his back and reminds him where he is as he sobs into his shirt sleeve. A door opens and closes. The last thing he wants is for El to see him like this. If she’s there, though, she doesn’t say or do anything. Steve takes deep breaths, dabbing the wetness off of his face as well as he can.

“The spaghetti,” Steve manages as his breathing calms, “It’s going to be mushy.”

Hopper turns off the burners and Steve salvages the spaghetti, using the spoon-and-tilt method to get the water out of the pot. They work quietly. El comes out of her room just in time for Steve to feel like a human again and she launches into a secondhand story about some mouth-breather at Hawkins Middle that lets Steve pretend things are normal. 

When Steve leaves for the night, Hopper gives him a hug, which feels weird until it doesn’t and then it’s over. For the first time in a long time, he goes to bed and dreams of nothing at all.

-

Steve gets lunch with Jacob a week later and learns that his wrongness is actually called being bisexual, and that Jacob doesn't think he's wrong at all. Steve doesn't really believe that until he's sitting on the hood of his car cloudgazing out by a backwoods creek. They argue over whether the one that's definitely a Transformer is a Transformer or a misshapen carrot. Before he knows it, he's laying down in the backseat with his legs sticking out of an open door, feeling warm despite the cool not-quite-spring air. The middle seat belt buckle digs into his hip and Duran Duran is on the radio. Now he really believes that Jacob doesn't think he's weird. He really, _ really  _ believes it for, like, two whole hours. 

When Jacob tells him to get his ass home before it's too late and he falls asleep at the wheel, he drives back to Hawkins on a high. Every window is rolled down and Steve turns the volume and the heat dials as far as they'll go, screaming along to Like A Virgin and Karma Chameleon, letting the wind carry his voice away. He stops at KFC, and then he's home.

The door flies open on its own and Steve hears an old Jim Croce record playing.

"You're late," El says.

"Your clock's off," Steve replies, plopping two bags down on the table.

Hopper immediately pulls out the bucket of chicken and starts claiming his pieces. "Nah, we reset it yesterday. You're late." 

"Are you ganging up on me? Assholes, I brought KFC!" 

El gets up from her perch on the couch, eyes glued to Steve even as she approaches the chicken. "Swear jar. Where were you?" 

"Nunya," Steve says, and throws a plastic-wrapped spork at her. She catches it and sends it flying back at him without raising a hand.

"Nunya is a trick. Where were you?" 

Steve looks at Hopper.

"If I tell you will you leave me alone and eat your chicken?" 

"...Yes."

Hopper looks back at him and raises an eyebrow.

"On a date." 

El's eyes fly wide open. "Wh-"

"You agreed," Hopper says, and sits down at the table, patting El's place next to him.

"You did agree," Steve says, sitting down. He takes a bite of his chicken.

"Besides, you don't know him."

Hopper smirks. Steve teaches El a new word for liking boys AND girls at around 7:33 on a Friday night, and she smiles like a kid on Christmas morning.

**Author's Note:**

> me and my neopets-addicted friend sarah @mjolnirbreaker did another fic swap!! our prompt this time was "found family dynamics" or something like that and we both ran in very similar yet tonally opposite directions. check out her account!!
> 
> title is from "salvation" by the strumbellas and i highly recommend you give it a listen!
> 
> talk to me on tumblr @discosteves!


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